St. Thomas Aquinas and the Aliens

Summary:
Aquinas’s discussion of the Hypostatic Union provides a framework for
Christians to accept the possibility of alien life forms on other planets.

Is
there life on other planets? This is a question that has interested people for
centuries. For the past 40 years, since the technology of large radio
telescopes became available, astronomers have been listening in to many nearby
stars hoping to pick up signals from extra-terrestrial intelligent beings. The
US Government funded these studies for a while, but when no signals were picked
up after three decades of listening, taxpayer support dwindled and eventually
dried up altogether. However, so broad was the interest in the Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) that private investors stepped in, and
provided millions of dollars to fund the search, which continues to this day.

No
signals have yet been received from an intelligent being by any radio
telescope. Nevertheless, interest in the SETI research program remains at a
high level. The program received a great boost in 1995 when astronomers in a
very different field of research discovered a planet orbiting around another
star. (The planet was not seen directly: it was discovered by detecting a
“wobble” in the path of the star around which it revolves.) Since 1995, reports
of the detection of planets around other stars have been coming in a steady
rate.As of July
1, 2002, the number of planets that are known to exist outside our solar
system reached the 100 mark.

We
live in exciting times. No-one yet claims that any of the 100 known planets
around other stars actually contain intelligent life. But the mere fact that
cold bodies (planets) exist in orbit around other stars opens up vistas of
alien life that would have been regarded by many as mere science fiction only a
few years ago.

The
late Carl Sagan, an astrophysics professor at CornellUniversity, probably did more than any
other scientist to popularize the possibility of life on other planets. Through
his writings and his enormously popular TV show Cosmos, Sagan
raised people’s awareness about the immensity of the universe and the vast
possibilities that may exist for life to appear. And the ultimate would be for
intelligent life to emerge somewhere in addition to Earth.

In
1985, Sagan published a book entitled “Contact” which
describes in fictional form what might happen when evidence for intelligent
life is first obtained. Sagan’s book is much more
than fiction, however. It contains a respectful invitation to consider how
science and religion might profitably interact. While the characters in the
book are attempting to devise a response to the aliens, it is not only the scientists
who are asked for an opinion: there is a place for religious figures to offer
appropriate insights.

For
a book authored by someone who was widely regarded as an atheist, it is
remarkable how well balanced the characters in Contact actually are. There is
no attempt to caricature the representatives of religion, or to portray the
scientists as universally enlightened. There is a mixture of good and bad on
both sides of the religion-science divide, just as there is in real life.

Underlying
the whole novel is the question: is there really a God, and if there is, what
can science say about this matter? Sagan does an
intriguing job of outlining what a scientist might consider to be proof of
God’s existence in the natural world. Since the physical world seems to be
remarkably well described by mathematics, Sagan
believes that God might want to prove His existence to scientists by hiding
some sort of a pattern in one of the natural numbers, such as pi (the ratio of
circumference to diameter of a circle). Perhaps, Sagan
suggests, if one were able to calculate the value of pi to a trillion (or a
quintillion, or more) decimal places, one might eventually come across a
non-random pattern of numbers out there. For example, one might find a string
of a few thousand sevens right next to each other. This lack of randomness
would be (in Sagan’s opinion) a sure sign of
intelligent design in the numbers of the natural world.

The
main character in the book “Contact” actually performs this test, and the
results of the test suggest that Sagan himself
believed in the existence of God, despite a widespread perception of Sagan as a sort of “atheist-in-chief” among scientists.

The
fact that Sagan was able to face squarely the
question “Is there a God?” in his book is in marked contrast to what happened
in the movie version of“Contact”. By the time the movie was being made, more than 10
years after the book appeared, Sagan was in terminal
illness, and he was in no shape to control the screen-writers. The latter took
liberties with the text, and as a result, the movie has a very different slant
from the book. The movie is unabashedly anti-religion, or more specifically,
anti-Christian. The Christian ministers in the movie are portrayed in quite
negative terms.

Most
telling of all, Sagan’s biographer Keay Davidson in the book “Carl Sagan:
a Life” (1999) recounts an incident from the making of the movie which speaks
volumes about certain people’s prejudices against religion. It seems that the
screen writers wanted to have the principal religious character utter the
following phrase after contact with the aliens is established: “My God was too
small!”

However,
the actor from whose lips this phrase was supposed to fall (Matt McConnaghty) refused to say it: he said that it was blasphemous,
and would serve as a gratuitous insult to a great number of people who believe
in God. As a result, the phrase does not appear in the movie.

Apparently,
certain non-believers (including the screen writers for the movie “Contact”)
are convinced that religious people have no room in their belief system for the
possibility of life on other planets.According to these folks, religious believers are supposed to imagine
that God could have made life only on this planet where we live. And if we ever
contact aliens, these folks apparently believe that this will spell the end for
organized religion as we know it, because (in their view) no organized religion
can accommodate a teaching about life on other planets.

But
in this regard, they are wrong. At least one theologian laid the groundwork for
Catholics to accept alien life forms within the context of their faith. And we
are not talking about a modern theologian who just happens to be keeping up
with the current scientific literature. No: the theologian in question, Thomas
Aquinas, did his work more than 700 years ago, while he was a theology professor at
the University of Paris.

What
did Aquinas have to say that is relevant to life on other planets? To get an
answer to this, let us consider his discussion of the Hypostatic Union. Since
the first public profession of faith in Christ’s divinity (“Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the Living God”: Matt 16, 16), Christians have known that
there is more to Christ than meets the eye. In Christ, there is more than
simply human nature: God is also somehow present in Him.

It
took a few centuries for the Church to figure out how Christ can be
simultaneously divine and human. But the fathers finally decided (at the
Council of Ephesus, in 431) that the best human
language could offer was to condense the mystery down to the so-called
“Hypostatic Union”: two natures co-exist without confusion in one divine
person.

When
Aquinas discusses the Hypostatic Union in his Summa Theologiae,
he makes the following point: it is inevitable that the Second Person of the
Trinity possesses at least one nature (the divine nature). As long as there is
only one nature and one person (let us refer to this as the one-in-one case),
there is no mystery involved. The mystery enters when we go beyond the
one-in-one to (say) the two-in-one teaching of Ephesus. It is indeed a profound
mystery of the Catholic faith how Christ can be one Person with two natures.

And
yet it is part of the story of Redemption that one of the divine persons (the
Second) took on human nature in order to redeem human beings.

Here
is where Aquinas’ argument takes a surprising turn: he points out that once a
divine person chooses to take on MORE THAN ONE nature, there is no reason why
that person should be limited to having merely TWO natures. There is, in
principle, no reason why the divine person should not have the ability to take
on three, four, or many natures, all united in an expanded version of what we
refer to (in our poor human language) as the Hypostatic Union.

In
view of the modern interest in life on other planets, this insight of Aquinas
must be considered remarkable. For if there are rational creatures on other
planets, endowed with free will, then it is possible
that sin exists on other planets. And if so, those fallen beings will require
Redemption just as we humans did. Presumably, the Second Person of the Trinity
(through whom all things were made, and for whom all things were made: Col. 1,
16) would be the one to effect the Redemption of those fallen beings also. And
how would He do that: presumably by taking on their nature in addition to His
Divine nature. His Person would remain single (the Second person of the
Trinity), but he would perform his actions in that other world through the
nature of the rational beings of that other world.

Using
this insight of Aquinas, we Christians do not have to fear that “our God is too
small” to accommodate the possibility of alien life. Instead, we can rejoice
that it may not be only ourselves who can claim: “In Him we live and move and
have our being” (Acts 1,28). Perhaps there is another
race of beings who can rightfully make the same claim.
Perhaps there are many such races.

To
be sure, this race (or these races) may not live on any of the 100 planets
which are known to today’s astronomers. But if such races exist, they must live
on some planet somewhere. And someday, if God wills, we may be permitted to
make contact with one of them. Won’t that be the day! On that day, if God wills
it, among the people who rejoice will surely be the former professor from Paris
(St. Thomas Aquinas) and the former professor from Cornell (Carl Sagan, R.I.P.).